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NEW YORK, May 31 /PRNewswire/ -- As Taking The Long Way debuts at #1 on the Billboard Top 200 best-selling albums chart this week, with first week's sales of 525,829, the Dixie Chicks have become the first female group in chart history to have three albums debut at #1, breaking the record the Chicks established in 2002 when the group's last studio album, Home, debuted at #1 and made them the first female group ever to have two albums debut at #1.

With the #1 debut of Taking The Long Way, the Dixie Chicks have also become the first female group in chart history to have three studio albums occupy the #1 slot on the Top 200.

Taking The Long Way has achieved one of the year's Top 5 first week's sales tallies and has the best first week's sales for any female act on the Top 200 in 2006.

In addition to its chart-topping success in America, Taking The Long Way has just debuted at #2 in Australia.

I wish they hadn't made the comments they made when and where they made them. But everyone (in free countries, anyway) has the right to say almost anything they want.

And everyone else has the right to react however they wish. It just so happens that a huge chunk of the fan base for the Dixie Chicks chose to boycott them.

That's their right. Unlike a lot of political conservatives though, I never felt declining sales proved the Dixie Chicks wrong in their political statements. I also never stopped liking their music. It's simply too good!

I've also always thought the Dixie Chicks were simply too talented to be kept down should they decide to continue performing. Besides, there's a huge market on the left for anyone who says anything negative about the Bush Administration.

Sadly (and wrongly), many on the left will try to equate renewed success for the Dixie Chicks as vindication for their political views.

But just like the initial decline in sales did not prove the Dixie Chicks wrong, increasing sales now will not prove them right.

They're simply a great group.

I think those on both sides of the political spectrum make too much of such things.

The Redwalls have a war protest song called "Colorful Revolution". I disagree with almost every single sentiment expressed in that song. But I still love the song!

I refuse to surrender my listening pleasure to my sense of political fellowship.

I'm glad they had the courage to speak their beliefs. There is no liberty without free speach. I hope they are not black listed like Muhammad Ali. If we all thought and believed the same things, life would be unbearably boring.

I don't think it is courageous to speak out against someone in an arena where that person is not popular. I think it is slander and gossip. I used to like their music, but it is full of hate and anger aimed towards those who spoke opennly about how they disagree with their statements, that is hypocracy. Also it is not courageous to speak out in a forum where no one had the ability to challenge their statements. Courage is when someone fights their own fear to do what is right without a lot of fanfare. I would have forgiven them their stupidity (alienating a huge portion of their fan base) but hen they came out with Not Ready To Make Nice which was basically giving the finger to anyone who disagreed with tem and chose to display it by boycotting them. I realize they got death threats, but that is not uncommon for people in their position, it does not make it right for them to do so, but it happens

Does everything have to be a political battle? Does everything have to be "this guy is in my camp, so everything he does is good" vs. "this guy is in the other camp, so everything he does is evil"?

You like the Chicks, that's great. You don't, that's great too.

They're a pop group, that's all. They write and sing songs.

But now even something as trivial as pop music has to be a pole we pound the other side with.

I'll admit -- I'm a lib and I like the Chicks' new album. I also think Mark Helprin's Winter's Tale may be the best American novel of the last 30 years, and I find his politics about as vile as I find anyone's.

Do I have to stop reading him now? Do I have to start cheering for his next book to fail to prove my team is right? Do I have to swear allegiance to Philip Roth instead because he's an old lefty and swear that The Ghost Writer is better?

Or can't I just separate my own personal politics from a lot of things that have nothing to do with politics?

Because I am as politically opiniated as Carol. (And even better, because I'm right!) But I think Bruce Willis is a damn fine actor -- really! -- and don't feel compelled to swear off Die Hard because he's a Bush guy. I even like Schwarzenegger as a movie star, even if I'm not a huge fan of him as governor. And I liked Neil Young when he was a Reagan fan, and I like him now that he's a Bush-basher, and I liked him even when I didn't know anything about his politics.

I'll argue politics any time of the day or night (as long as my wife isn't around -- she gets really mad at me). But sometimes, even I like to give it a rest.

May 10, 1933 - An event unseen since the Middle Ages occurs as German students from universities formerly regarded as among the finest in the world, gather in Berlin and other German cities to burn books with "unGerman" ideas. Books by Freud, Einstein, Thomas Mann, Jack London, H.G. Wells and many others go up in flames as they give the Nazi salute.

In Berlin, Nazi Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels gave a speech to the students, stating...

"...The era of extreme Jewish intellectualism is now at an end. The breakthrough of the German revolution has again cleared the way on the German path...The future German man will not just be a man of books, but a man of character. It is to this end that we want to educate you. As a young person, to already have the courage to face the pitiless glare, to overcome the fear of death, and to regain respect for death - this is the task of this young generation. And thus you do well in this midnight hour to commit to the flames the evil spirit of the past. This is a strong, great and symbolic deed - a deed which should document the following for the world to know - Here the intellectual foundation of the November (Democratic) Republic is sinking to the ground, but from this wreckage the phoenix of a new spirit will triumphantly rise..."

The speech and book burning were accompanied by the singing of Nazi songs and anthems.

Over a hundred years earlier, the German-Jewish poet, Heinrich Heine, had stated, "Where books are burned, human beings are destined to be burned too."